Last-minute chance to join an amazing conference and panel! We are looking for papers to submit a panel proposal for the 2025 Conference of the European Society for Environmental History (ESEH). 18-22 August 2025, Uppsala, Sweden.

Experiences of environmental change have long been integral to processes of migration. Throughout history, those who have crossed borders and built a life in new places, have also had to come to terms with a different nature than the one they previously knew and engaged with.

This session invites papers which consider the conference theme of historical responses to environmental change in the context of processes of migration. Rather than focusing on migration as an outcome of climate change, we invite submissions which consider the lives and practices of migrants as a case study in social adaptability in the face of a transformed and ever-transforming nature. We welcome contributions from any historical period and also invite contributions from the social sciences and those who wish to discuss these themes in a more contemporary context.

We are particularly interested in the continuities that emerge from migrants’ environmental knowledge and/or their plant use. How have migrants overcome divergences in climate, soil, and fauna? Which modifications of nature have ensued from migrants’ environmental practices? How has their environmental knowledge been appropriated? And how might processes of migration enhance societal resilience to climate change?

Please submit your abstract (max 250 words) by 12 November 2024.

Any questions - feel free to contact us!